Death & Blood a little borked?

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
I don't get it. It seems like death and to a lesser extent blood are just better paths than the other magic paths. Is this intended? Perhaps I am missing something?

You're absolutely correct, Air is a much weaker and less useful path all around. DOWN WITH DEATH AND BLOOD.

[Arralen]

And Astral ... don't forget about astral .. you may get your path level 5 pretender killed by a lousy shaman !!

oh, wait, does it make it too strong or too weak???

Damn, nerf it anyway. All of them...

[ June 02, 2004, 20:15: Message edited by: Arralen ]

[PvK]

All the death and blood summons can be banished or destroyed by the many things that bLast the undead.

Against opponents with enough cheap priests or whatever, these things are not so tough.

PvK

[HJ]

IMHO:
Death is pretty specific in its combat usefulness. Unless you have undead army, its combat usage is fairly limited. Even its early combat summons are not too great unless cast by a powerful mage - a DD mage can only summon a few skeletons before colapsing; useful, but not too great. Blood is even more specific in combat, as it's very exhausting and require the presence of frail blood slaves (ever had any blood slaves left on Abyssian mage after combat?).

As for the summons, I find most of the early ones to be rather cost-ineffective in mage time, all the way until you get to higher levels of research, when other paths get good summons as well (well, maybe not water apart from sea trolls). I mean, 5 death gems and a DD mage's turn for a single wight is not all that great. I would rather put him to research so I can access the more useful summons sooner (which is a shame, because I almost never get to use the early ones that don't have high-end counterparts, such as the drakes).

The rest of it is fine and balanced IMO. You cannot really cast powerful globals with death unless you're Ermor, so you have to have something that is in favor - and this is where remote summons come into action. High blood rituals are also either risky, or summons. Yes, the late summons are very powerful, but that's the essence of blood anyway. You have flame storms and shimmering fields on one side, and heliophagi on the other.

[ June 02, 2004, 20:58: Message edited by: HJ ]

[Huzurdaddi]

You're absolutely correct, Air is a much weaker and less useful path all around. DOWN WITH DEATH AND BLOOD.

Ah scarcasm. Cute. Yes I understand that Air has a number of very powerful spells. As a matter of fact many people have commented that air combat magics are perhaps too powerful or do use another word abusive.

However the "problem" with air is not that most of the spells are busted, but rather that a few are very efficient (eg: Wrathful Skies, Lighting Orb ). While I think that the problem with Blood and death is more pervasive.

Of course some people simply like the status quo. I would imagine Zen that you argued like heck against nerfing the VQ.

[PvK]

Death summons are strong... until they get banished, which is a cheap, very effective, and common weapon which anyone with holy priests can use, without any research or gem investment.

Blood summons are almost all the same way (a bit more resistant, but less numerous), and having to use masses of blood slaves for everything is a strong limitation.

PvK

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
These two paths SEEM to have some of the best summons in the game at somewhat low research levels.

Blood is almost entirely a summoning school, so it's not that surprising that it has some of the better summoned units. The various level 4 blood summons are actually quite expensive in both blood slaves and mage time. Each casting requires both a level 2 or greater blood mage to cast, plus another blood mage to find the slaves for every single casting.

The death summons are powerful, but not _that_ powerful when you consider their weaknesses. The commander type summons can defeat many normal troops, but this also requires that you put a very large amount of gems into them.

Nature magic also has very good summons. Lamias, for example, are extremely hard to kill, and can be summoned in very large quantities at a low cost.

However they also have excellent higher level summons as well, ex: demon lords, ghost riders, tartarus gate.

Tartarian gate is only really useful if the nation is able to cast and keep gift of health, and has a large enough nature gem income to cast gift of reason every turn. If that's the case, then they have about 20+ nature gems per turn, which should be able to cause a fair amount of damage. The various demon lords are powerful, but also require a major expenditure in gems to make it safe enough to actually use them in combat.

Now it is true that blood has pretty bad combat magic. But death has excellent combat magic. Eg: Life Drain, Soul Vortex, raise dead. All excellent.

Death has excellent offensive combat magic, but almost no defensive capability at all. Most of the death spells only act to overcome the extreme fragility of most undead troops.